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Striking Back (1/72 Trumpeter Wellington Ic)


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"How easy it would have been for National Socialist Germany to misuse its superiority in the air just as Great Britain has always done at sea. But in Poland, Adolf Hitler gave the world proof of his military leadership. The Luftwaffe followed his orders and attacked only military targets."
 
--  SS-Standartenführer Toni Winkelnkemper, Der Großangriff auf Köln. Ein Beispiel (Berlin: Franz Eher, 1942) (trans. Randall Bytwerk)
 
 
"Suddenly two German planes appeared from nowhere and dropped two bombs only two hundred yards away on a small home. Two women in the house were killed. The potato diggers dropped flat upon the ground, hoping to be unnoticed. After the bombers had gone, the women returned to their work. They had to have food. But the Nazi fliers were not satisfied with their work. In a few minutes they came back and swooped down to within two hundred feet of the ground, this time raking the field with machine-gun fire. Two of the seven women were killed. The other five escaped somehow. While I was photographing the bodies, a little ten-year old girl [Kazimiera Mika, actually aged 12] came running up and stood transfixed by one of the dead. The woman was her older sister. The child had never before seen death and couldn't understand why her sister would not speak to her..."
 
-- Julien Bryan, "Warsaw: 1939 Siege; 1959 Warsaw Revisited"
 
 

"If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should—so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again."

 
-- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
 
 
"I keep thinking of Winston Churchill down at Westerham, full of patriotism and ideas for saving the Empire. A man who knows you must act to win. You cannot remain supine and allow yourself to be hit indefinitely." 
 
-- Sir Edmund Ironside, Diary entry for 27 July 1939
 
It's always a struggle to pick out a kit these days, because I know I'll have pathetically little time to work on it and it will take ages and ages, and do I really want to build it for that long? But sooner or later you either have to get off the pot or do what you sat on it to do, so here we are. I decided to build the Trumpeter Wellington Ic I have in my stash, one of three of their Wellington kits I own, and given my current build rate, it will likely be finished around the time the presumably infinitely superior Airfix one comes out (though most Airfix kits these days seem to come complete with one clanger in the box, cf. the Harrier GR3 tail or Hurricane canopy and wing panels). 
 
I'll be building Wellington Ic R1593 OJ-N "for Nuts"/FIREFLY of 149 (East India) Squadron, whose motto was Fortis Nocte; Strong By Night. The squadron served as both a night bombing unit in the Great War (flying the delightfully ungainly-looking F.E.2, a personal favourite) and in World War II, where it flew a whole panoply of types: Heyfords, Wellingtons, Stirlings, and Lancasters. After the war, it flew Lincolns, Washingtons, and Canberras, before finally disbanding in 1956. 
 
R1593 was damaged beyond repair during a raid on Bremen on 14/15 July 1941, when she was coned by searchlights at 8,000 feet and hit hard by flak. Skillful evasive maneuvers by her pilot, Sergeant (later Warrant Officer) Donald Anthony "Tony" Gee (23/1/1920-7/10/1942) brought the aircraft down to 2,000 feet and enabled her and her (miraculously unhurt) crew to struggle back to Mildenhall, where she crash-landed. Sadly, Warrant Officer Gee was killed in a flying accident on 7 October 1942 while instructing on a training flight in Wellington Ic R1801 from 28 OTU when a piece of fabric tore off the wing while the aircraft was airborne. He was 22, had flown 37 missions over enemy territory, and left behind his wife Irene. 
 
The kit decals are a rather voluptuous, if not alarmingly sensual, red, and the codes are a rather anemic, unhealthy looking exceptionally pale grey (roughly the colour of the late Christopher Lee's flesh in Dracula...possibly drained of their vital essence by the roundels) which is why we're building N-Nuts off a Techmod sheet, rather than the kit option of a 301 ("Ziemi Pomorskiej") Squadron aircraft of the Free Polish forces. Also, I generally like nose art. 
 
20171116_181526
 
 
 
 
N-Nuts in life.
 
55f9da8bcd8514fb6bd4fa57eff35572.jpg
 
 
My workbench is as clean as it's gonna get. Let's get going. 
 
20171116_174243
 
 
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possibly colorised...?  

4300313182_3fc11a1e44_o.jpgVickers Wellington  Mk. 1c by Etienne du Plessis, on Flickr

but maybe of interest as a different pic?

EDIT and comparing it,  several months before or after as trees are in leaf.

 

these look real

5110112678_4694260fb1_o.jpgWellington.   1942 by Etienne du Plessis, on Flickr

 

4915381509_21a324001d_o.jpgVickers Wellington. by Etienne du Plessis, on Flickr

 

a few more here

https://www.flickr.com/search/?w=8270787@N07&q=wellington

but the above are the early ones.

 

hope of interest

T

Edited by Troy Smith
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I'm looking forward to following this. My father trained as a tail gunner in a Wellington late in the war, and my uncle, Leslie Robert Gee (not related to Donald Anthony Gee above) was a tail gunner in a Halifax and was killed, aged 19, May 13 1944. 

Cheers,

John

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51 minutes ago, LostCosmonauts said:

With you on the insomnia front @Stew Dapple 

 

Tidy is always a relative term but I think before getting into the build proper @Procopius should do introductions and tell us this little fella’s name

 

That's Chauncey. My sister made him in a chemistry class about ten years ago and gave him to me.

 

1 hour ago, Troy Smith said:

hope of interest

Yep! Thanks, Troy.

 

I've spent much of my work week at Social Media Week Chicago, which is a conference for people in my field...most of the people in my field, however, represent ad agencies (sociopaths) or brands (soulless reptiles), rather than struggling, byzantine not-for-profits like the one I work for. As such, they're radically different in personality, outlook, style, the whole thing. It's had me seriously questioning whether I want to remain in my field, the only thing I'm halfway good at professionally, when it seems to be hellbent on destroying everything about life that's worth living. Did you know the average human attention span dropped from 12 seconds to eight in the last decade? Actual statistic I heard to today. Our job, collectively, is to get this number lower, basically. I listened to a gym-chiseled fortysomething jerk in jeans and t-shirt featuring a super-woke slogan so you knew it was okay that he came off as a heartless, soulless caricature of a human being, because you know, he cares. Not that you'd know it from hearing him talk, mainly about his own greatness. I'm in my thirties, and I was one of the oldest people in the room. People there couldn't imagine "spending 106 minutes doing anything," and this is the nightmare world we're headed for, a wholly ephemeral future.

 

Oh well. This is how every generation feels when the torch is passed. Those of you who've been patiently waiting for it to happen to those irritating teenagers from the late 1990s: it got us. It got us good.

 

Anyway, I've gotten the kit parts all washed, and it occurs to me: I have no idea what the interior of the Wellington was like, aside from the black front office. The kit instructions aren't super helpful in this regard, either. In this photo, the geodetic structure looks almost silver or pale grey, with dark brown/blotchy pinkish-red fabric.

 

post-634-0-95757400-1424320909.jpg

 

I'm glad I looked, because I was originally going to try and use Misterkit RFC/RAF clear-doped linen as my interior colour, with a red-brown oil wash over it, but this looks much more straightforward...if I'm correct.

 

 

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Sounds like a fun week at work :D

 

I think the geodetic framework is (painted) Aluminium. The reddish doped fabric was called out in the Airfix Swordfish instructions as Humbrol 61 (Matt Flesh) to reproduce the effect of the doped linen seen from the inside - the un-doped side (Humbrol's Matt Flesh, if you have never seen it, was always toward the choleric end of the colour scale); in reality, as no-one will see anyway I imagine you could go anywhere from Dull Roundel Red to a fairly delicate pink and anywhere inbetween, or any blotchy combination thereof, and still get away with it :)

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

 

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Great I’m in on Page 1. I always enjoy a Procopius build and this one looks as if it will be another classic.

 

Bunch up everyone I’ll share my popcorn!

 

Trevor

 

ps - a little light reading....

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11107561

 

....and here’s the video

 

 

 

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Quote

While I was photographing

I believe I have seen that series of photographs. Plus da change such  evidential anguish..

 

I've the same kit my self for a future build and been collecting some media as a result. 

 

I took some shots of the Wellington at Weybridge a few years back, I think there were some interiors - If I can locate them I'll post them up. 

 

There's some nice interior glimpses in this:

and some atmospheric exterior textures here:

Plus some truly excellent detail of the defensive/offensive equipment in this almost Powell & Pressburgerish training film:

HTH,

Tony

 

Eduardovich: I've just checked the media drive and the photos I took were back in 2012 on a cameraphone and  in low light too grotty in quality to insult your build with. I must go now and prostrate myself before the People's Commissar for Museum Photography. He is a harsh man and not at all kind to failings in reproductive verisimilitude....

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Yes! Another PC build! I'm in, of course :)

A great introduction and background as usual PC - I do admire your research and how you bring the subject of the model into such detailed context. Interesting and inspiring.

 

Unlike your conference by the sound of it? Attention span of eight seconds? That's almost the same as a Goldfish isn't it? Worrying. I re-read 'Brave New World' recently and it's scary how much we seem to be happily swimming towards that type of society. One can only hope that there are some Alphas left, somewhere, sprinkling some flakes of wisdom into the top of the fish bowl for the others who are swimming around saying 'Ooh look, a tweet' and not realising it's the same one they saw last time around.

 

Internal colours? I agree with Stew (of course) that the frames are 'bare metal' and the rest a sort of patchy linen / pink as a result of the red dope applied to the outside soaking through.

Good luck with that!

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What a great project! I built the oft-maligned MPM kit in the Bomber Command GB a while back and had a great time with it. I was very surprised by how little of the interior you can see through those enormous windows along the side. Looking at the photos of the real thing (and nearly an hour seems to have passed somewhere in the video section...), it looks like the grey used for the codes early in the war did vary considerably in shade when compared to the white of the roundels.

 

Regards,

Adrian

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Ah Eduardo, may I bimble along with you on this exciting build please, I may drop in the occasional comment or even, when I find them the odd picture I took at Brooklands a few years ago.

 

If you deem they will help rather than hinder progress

 

It is well that you do this now

 

Tomo and the gang, moi included, were privileged to examine the soon arriving Airfix offering

 

I intend buying and building it as soon as...

 

'tis a veritable joy to behold and I no longer 'do' WW2 RAFmodels

 

But I will

Edited by perdu
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6 hours ago, CedB said:

Attention span of eight seconds? That's almost the same as a Goldfish isn't it?

One second less, in fact!

 

3 hours ago, perdu said:

Ah Eduardo, may I bimble along with you on this exciting build please, I may drop in the occasional comment or even, when I find them the odd picture I took at Brooklands a few years ago.

 

If you deem they will help rather than hinder progress

 

Please do! I much prefer to know in advance rather than endure that hoary old Britmodeller chestnut, the chappie who shows up just as you're finishing the dullcoat and goes "oh by the way, I think you'll find the copilot had a leather bucket seat, and the cockpit interior of XY666 was a vermillion-puce polka dot pattern because Andy Warhol did the interior per an unpublished monograph in my possession which I can only vaguely allude to for reasons of wanting to feel a little more important".

 

7 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Eduardovich: I've just checked the media drive and the photos I took were back in 2012 on a cameraphone and  in low light too grotty in quality to insult your build with. I must go now and prostrate myself before the People's Commissar for Museum Photography. He is a harsh man and not at all kind to failings in reproductive verisimilitude....

Self-criticism is the second best kind of criticism, comrade.

 

8 hours ago, Stew Dapple said:

(Humbrol's Matt Flesh, if you have never seen it, was always toward the choleric end of the colour scale)

 

Original name: Hu63 Country Squire.

 

Okay everyone, confession time: everytime I see an unskinned Wellington, I imagine them collapsing like those toy Hobermann sphere kids whose parents loathe them enough to only buy science-y toys sometimes have:

 

 

Presumably at the end of a mission, the riggers nearly removed the fabric covering for a good dry-cleaning, and the aircraft were collapsed and put back in the storage closet.

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12 hours ago, Max Headroom said:

It gives an indication as to the colour of the linen being used to cover the airframe. 

 

while  not a Wellington,   this is the inside of the unrestored Finnish Hurricane,

showing the bleed through the red oxide dope through the fabric,   which may give an idea of what to aim for.

 

 

IMG_6631.JPG

note the stringers and fuselage formers are wood painted with aluminum dope.
 

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OK if we are sitting comfortably and because baby, quietly here are the Wimpy  pics I gleaned from my trip in 2013.

 

No doubt the Wimpy will be further along by now but this was then

Lots of the interior is visible from exterior so I didnt put the knees through the torture of getting about near the inside

New_Years_Day_Brooklannds2013_017.jpg

 

New_Years_Day_Brooklannds2013_020.jpg

 

 

New_Years_Day_Brooklannds2013_033.jpg

 

New_Years_Day_Brooklannds2013_034.jpg

 

It is a fabulous place with treasures in abundance for car lovers too I recall

 

but as my heart will always be aviating I wandered round in that hangar for ages

 

I saw this familiar little shape

New_Years_Day_Brooklannds2013_018.jpg

and up on the walls this sculpture becomes something historic too when you look ardently into the words on the plaque

 

New_Years_Day_Brooklannds2013_041.jpg

These are the extended wing tips from G-VTOL, some kind of self levitating machine

 

This however (last one from me Edward) is a sadder sight

New_Years_Day_Brooklannds2013_045.jpg

The fronts of some rather iconic aeroplanes I avow

 

Hope the Wellington ones are some use PC

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